Game of Thrones started again last week and I still haven't seen the last series. But instead I've been watching two old things with 'The' in the title.

The Avengers
I went to my parents last weekend and Dad mentioned The Avengers is on weekdays. So we watched a couple of Steed & Peel episodes. They were the beginning of the colour ones, which I have seen all of. I can't remember which black & white ones I have seen any more - and sometimes looking at the descriptions on the backs of the DVDs makes me want to rewatch ones I know I have seen, which isn't helpful for getting through them.

It was well timed because I've just been listening to Big Finish's audio adaptations of Steed & Peel comic strips. Which were good and gloriously ridiculous and whimsical, which is what I like about The Avengers. The first one was (sort of) a follow up to an episode that I didn't remember. And then I discovered that's because I've seen the other two episodes on the DVD, but not that one. Or I hadn't at the time - I've seen it now.

They're also showing Tara King episodes, which I would tape, since I've only seen a few of those. But there are two every weekday and I'd just never get through them. I already have a load of stuff I haven't watched.

The Guild
I'd heard of this - I knew it was a web series that Felicia Day had done, but nothing else. But then I read her book and found out it was about people playing an MMORG and it sounded interesting. I've never played one myself because I know I'd get sucked into it, but I have some idea of what they involve. Not that it mattered much for watching The Guild. Which I got through the whole of in less than a week. It was good - I liked it. And now I'm trying to stop myself from re-watching it all with annotations (which are interesting).

Since the re-release of the whole of The Avengers on DVD, I've been watching the Cathy Gale era. Or at least trying to. I made it through two DVDs plus half an episode before I decided that I wasn't going to enjoy it more the more I tried.

I started with the Emma Peel era. I own them all on DVD in a boxset that was only available in Region 1. Although I've seen all the colour episodes, I still haven't seen all the black & white ones. I must finish those sometime.

I went onto the Tara King era because they were the only ones available at the time. I think I've seen two DVDs of those. It took me a while to get used to Tara, but Steed's still Steed and Tara's flat is so cool. Her front door is a floor above the rest of the flat and she has a fireman's pole to get down to the lounge. There are stairs too, but the fireman's pole comes in very useful in fights. The point at which I really like the era was in Look - (stop me if you've heard this one) But There Were These Two Fellers which involved people being murdered in clown-related ways. The whole thing's hilarious.

The Cathy Gale era can't fail to be cool with Honor Blackman (although as far as I'm concerned she'll always be the grandmother in whatever sitcom it was I watched in the 80s/90s with Joe McGann). I've even (accidentally) started with some of the later DVDs. I've even gone for episodes that are supposedly good or like the Emma Peel era. And I've just not really cared much. Partly it's because the relationship between Steed & Gale isn't like that of Steed & Peel and I miss it. But also I haven't like the episodes so much. I can't put my finger on why, I just can't get excited about them.

So the conclusion is I need to finish my Emma Peel box set and not worry so much about the rest.

I've had a relaxing and productive weekend. Probably because Sel was coming over I got up and got on on Saturday, so I had tidied and cleaned by 11am. We went out for Chinese for dinner and managed to make it during a time when it wasn't raining! I discovered there's a shop in town that sells Really Useful Boxes and looks like it has more than Staples in Oxford, who are a bit crap for them (Staples in Poole are much better) and we met a cat in the castle gardens. My chocolate mousse turned out nice again, which was good.

We watched Frontios, a Fifth Doctor story which neither of us had seen, and had Jeff Rawle (George Dent from Drop the Dead Donkey) looking really young. I had forgotten he did this over ten years before he did Drop the Dead Donkey. It turned out to be a very good story, we were gripped. It was a bit surreal when we watched Thursday's episode of The Last Detective and Jeff Rawle was in it again. The Last Detective seems to attract lots of well-known names because this one also had Celia Imrie and some bloke I recognise (he was married to Celia Imrie's character - where do I know him from?) and last week's had Jackie Tyler and Peter Davison's daughter. And of course every week it has Peter Davison, Shaun Hughes and one of the wives from the 40s thing that the bloke who played Rodney in Only Fools and Horses was in. And I've entirely forgotten the relevant names and titles now.

We also watched a couple of good episodes of The Avengers. From looking at the backs of my DVDs I think I have about three Emma Peel DVDs to go. I must get on and watch them - I leave it so long in between watching The Avengers that I'm surprised how good it is every time I do.

Now I have watched every Fifth Doctor story! (Also every Seventh and Third Doctor stories). So I feel justified in working my way through One due to loving Ian. He's so great.

I also bought some stuff for my Romania trip (and Robot on DVD to watch when I get back, along with the three episodes I'll have missed). One of the things we have to have are steel cap toe boots. I was quite impressed to find a pink pair. So they'll go with the t-shirt, which is still pink after one wash.

Since its The Avengers night, yet they've got to the ones I've seen, I put on one off my DVDs. And now I've seen every colour Emma Peel episode, woohoo! It was one with an invisible man in and I spent the episode wondering how it was done. Some episodes are very clever like that - they look like science fiction but turn out to be reality. Escape in Time is another one that springs to mind. Mind you, there was also the boots that meant the wearer could walk on the ceiling...

I haven't posted an extract from Sex Tips for Girls for months, so here's another:Read more...

Lovefilm are really annoying me now. I got sent a thing for a 3 month free trial, so I'm working my way through Press Gang with them. At least, that's the theory. You have to have at least 10 titles on your list and you can rate them at high, medium or low priority. So I bunged all the Press Gang on at high priority and some other stuff at low. The first two discs they sent were series 1 disk 1 and series 4. So I watch the first seven episodes and sent it back. So they sent series 3. So I sent them both back and am about to get series 2 disk 1 and Doctor Who: The Invasion disk 1. Which I'd quite like to see but the question is, would they ever send me disk 2? So I'll keep sending them discs back, until eventually, I get the next one. Could take the whole three months at this rate.

Amazon are much better though. I just got Dark Season through them and it's interesting, yet weird so far. And currently no sign of Jacqueline Pearce, who I noticed was in it. I completely failed to notice that Kate Winslett was higher up the cast list...

I had a TV watching night tonight. There was The Avengers, which I haven't seen for a while. I'd forgotten how good it is. There was a fair bit of Emma Peel running round a house, trying to work out what's going, with nothing to tell you how she feels about it except for Diana Rigg's acting. Which was fabulous. And Steed rides to her rescue, only to discover she's done it on her own 🙂

There was also Stargate, suitably loud. It's a tradition. And there was Colin & Justin, which wasn't as funny as usual, but they obviously still have no idea what the word 'budget' means. I failed to notice Mock the Week was back, but since it's repeated on Saturday, I'll tape the repeat instead.

Then I saw the first episode of Murder in Suburbia. Which was quite weird because I didn't start watching until series 2 (are they ever going to do any more?) when it was well established that Ash fancied their boss (who I'm sure has a name), it was just a question of whether he fancied her back. And whether she'd ever stop embarrassing herself over him. The murder stuff was interesting as well. I do like my cop shows.

I am so tired. Because of ZoneAlarm I didn't go to bed till late Sunday night. And Tuesday I thought I'd get an early night but ended up finishing off the second draft of my ficathon piece instead. (It's now 7000 words, but definitely going go get longer because I'm still not happy with large parts of it). And last night I had a Rotaract Exec meeting, so didn't get back till late - and then I just fell into bed when I did. Tomorrow night my sister's invited me to hers for a girly party with DVDs, so that won't be an early night. And we're following it up by swimming on Saturday morning.

I think she is doing me pizza, so not quite sure how that's going to turn out or where she's got stuff from. The funniest part was her text message where she said to bring DVDs. Somehow I don't think she'll appreciate mind all that much.

So tonight I'm having a relaxing TV watching night. Tonight's Avengers was great, and kept you guessing up till the end. It was well acted by Patrick Macnee as well. Then in a bit there's a thing about the Chanukah story and then there's Mock the Week, which seems to be a cross of Have I Got News For You and Whose Line is it Anyway. And is very funny.

I also need to finish off the Serenity extras (didn't like the film as much as the series) so I can get The Sontaran Experiment next. Speaking of which, Doctor Who Magazine has a list of who is doing the commentaries on the series 2 DVDs and Elisabeth Sladen isn't in the School Reunion one 🙁 They did also say that Torchwood is 22nd October, which is the second to last rumour I heard. The Radio Times website has To be announced in its slot, so could be right. The official website is up but they've labelled their links in a 'clever' way and I can't be arsed to work out what they might mean, so no idea what's on it or whether it's up to much (navigation notwithstanding). Note to me to remember later and Sel when you read this: this would be a good thing for the panel, esp as a way to really piss me off.

From llin, a very cool toy: Radiophonatron. And Habitat for Humanity has announced their 2007 dates, and I really want to go to the Romanian one in June. I just need to think of a way of raising at least £350. Anyone any ideas?

I am now up-to-date on where BBC4 is up to in The Avengers - at least once The Proms have finished. The one I had missed was a funny Scottish one with Steed in a kilt. And, in fact, most of the men in it in kilts. And lots of bagpipes, which are thankfully a lot quieter on TV than in real life. Although I still don't quite understand what the plot was all about I enjoyed it anyway.

I was good tonight and updated my website. And remembered why I hate putting fics up on ff.net so much. Although it says it accepts quite a few formats it actually refuses to even look at half of them. And the other half it ignores all the formatting on. HTML is the only one I can get to work and then, for no explicable reason, it stripped out all my between scenes symbols. After two goes I gave up. I have better things to do with my life, frankly.

I've also done my wrist in. It wasn't happy a few weeks ago which I realised was probably to do with doing too much Hanjie. Except this morning it got too painful to use the mouse with, so it could be a combination of both. Now I am practising my mouse use with my left hand and handily the tubigrip I bought to protect my skin from my guitar (as I'm allergic to it) fits on my wrist.

Last night while trying to sleep I came up with part of a plot for the Dream a Little Dream sequel. I'd sort of planned doing one anyway because I realised I'd not so much written a hurt/comfort as a comfort/hurt, and while I don't plan on making it all better, I should probably be slightly nice and let the characters recover a little bit.

So, what have I done recently? The Saturday before last was where it all started. I was at a Rotaract thing and they had a kid's wooden climbing thing. And a seesaw. So at lunchtime I'd been on the seesaw, then thought I'd go up the climbing thing so I could go across the wooden bridge and down the slide. Except that I climbed up a selection of horizontal logs which necessitated me looking down at them and therefore I didn't see the one at the top painted with red and white stripes and consequently hit it with my face. Quite hard. My bendy glasses were not that bendy, I cut my top lip and worst of all bruised my nose where my glasses sit and behind my ear where my glasses sit. And possibly my forehead.

So after that I started feeling tired and dizzy, which wasn't really a good sign. As I had a driving lesson the next morning I ended up speaking to four different nurses. NHS Direct decided that because I couldn't concentrate and my memory wasn't great I should go to A&E or have someone with me. So I called a friend of mine who lives round the corner, who happened to be a nurse. She made me ring the out of hours doctor, who turned out to be a nurse. She recommended I go to the Minor Injuries Unit, which was a whole lot emptier than A&E. Fortunately, my friend's mum drove me there. The nurse there eventually concluded that I either had a mild concussion or was coming down with something and it might have gone by the morning.

Turned out to be flu and I could have skipped the whole thing.

So, anyway, I spent a week desperately trying to cool down (eventually discovered a cold flannel on the face and feet is fantastic) and watching & listening to lots of Doctor Who and some Avengers.

The first Avengers on the DVDs had Steed and Peel fencing at the beginning. Which was partically him trying to convince her to go to Little Bazeley-by-the-sea and also so he could have cream in his tea. Then they had a wonderful scene on the train where they had to 'rough it' due to there being no restaurant car, at which point Steed had a definite Mary Poppins bag, the number and size of things he pulled out of it.

I also saw Carnival of Monsters, which is a Third Doctor and Jo episode, and a good one as well. I discovered the commentary was quite handy for lying down with your eyes closed too.

So then this weekend I've been feeling better, so spent it catching up, and I've just done, in time for doing a whole load more Rotaract things tomorrow in preparation for tomorrow's meeting.

Yesterday my PCMCIA card with two USB ports arrived. The booklet that came with it had instructions on how to install with various versions of Windows, but for mine it basically boiled down to 'plug it in'. So I did and it worked perfectly. At which point I died of shock transferred everything from the old external hard drive to the new one. And I've still only used 100Gb (most of that is backups).

While I did that I finished off Inferno. All I knew about it was that there was a parallel dimension and the Brigadier wore an eyepatch. I thought it started off quite slow because he didn't get there until episode 3 but once he did I was engrossed, it was really good and exciting, and a bit scary. I loved the Brigadier and Benton in this and hated Liz's hair. You can tell it's the 60s - all the women are in really short skirts. What I didn't know was that the AU Brig didn't have a moustache. Which, frankly was just not right.

I hadn't noticed that BBC4 are now showing the black & white Emma Peel episodes. Which is a bit pointless as I've got them on DVD and because I've seen both tonight's and this weeks. They are, however, really good ones.

Tonight I actually watch something that's on TV and not Doctor Who shocker. I was about to say it won't last except the next two weeks are going to be taken up watching large amounts of Wimbledon.

First there was Colin and Justin. Which did involve doing everything at the last minute, as always, and pink suits but didn't involve Justin going off on one. On the other hand it did have a bride that was ridiculously picky I don't know why she wasn't doing it all herself. There was a groom as well, I'm not sure he got much of a say in anything.

I am working my way through the best of The Avengers, so all the ones I'm watching at the moment are good. Tonight I went for The Gravediggers which had an excellent fight sequence on a minature train, with Mrs Peel tied to the tracks and with appropriate music. You had to love the eccentric (ie mad but rich) guy who always ate on a train - with scenery going past, the sound of the train going along, the steam from the engine and his butler cum skivvy rocking the carriage. I want one.

I do like The Avengers. The Cybernauts is an excellent science fiction-type episode. There's a great speech in the middle, given by the evil genius bad guy:

Computers no bigger than a cigarette box. Pocket television. And radios smaller than a wristwatch.

Back in 1965 that was science fiction. He also had a computer that could do calculations (shock! horror!) and spit out the results on punch cards.

But the Cybernauts' karate chop is very cool. Who cares about Cybermen when you can have silent Cybernauts karate chopping their way through doors?

I've also been working my way through The Talons of Weng Chiang this week. I thought it was slow to start but ended up being really good. I really liked one of the guest characters attitude towards the Doctor, assuming he's a Sherlock Holmes type (well, he was dressed as Holmes...). I really liked Leela in this as well, trying to kill people and using her brain to try and find out what's going on.

The thing I've noticed is that it's quite hard to cross stitch to Doctor Who and especially The Avengers. It's because there's quite a bit of action you need to watch and The Avengers often has whole scenes with no speech.

I have a vague memory of reading something a long time ago talking about how some TV programmes are more like radio, in that you don't need to watch them. Yes, Minister is a good example because BBC7 have quite happily transmitted episodes and they hardly lose anything on the radio. It doesn't make it any less funny though. It consistently amazes me how something that pretty much just involves three blokes in a room talking can be so funny.

The second coolest fake pet in the world: Sam the Cat. My sister has one - he purrs and breathes when you stroke him. And when his batteries haven't run out.

The coolest fake pet in the world is Intelligent Guinea Pig it runs round like a real pet and everything! I so want one.

I enjoyed last night's Doctor Who, although it could have done without the addition of dad's computer mysteriously playing up in the middle. But they went to an alien world! And it was a quarry! And it was exciting. I'm really hoping next week's resolution isn't going to be a letdown.

Then we watched an episode of The Avengers where a guy has a machine that sends criminals back in time. Only at the end do you discover how they do it - it's very clever. I only have one colour episode to go now! (and about 22 black & white ones, so I think they'll last a while)

I'm nearly a quarter of the way there! It's just a pity we're nearly halfway through the year...

34.1cm / 155cm(22.0%)

Doctor Who - Unnatural History
This is the second Eighth Doctor book I've read and manages to be another parallel Earth type one. It's a good introduction to Sam because the one in this is an alternate one. Sadly, though, I didn't like this Doctor or Fitz or the original Sam. Or the story. It was good for a couple of days and 2cm and the charity shop.

Sadlers Wells - Principal Role and Swan Feather
I read somewhere that all the Sadlers Wells books are the same story. That's certainly true of Swan Feather: Sylvia Swan has pretty much exactly the same story as Jane and Ella and Rosanna. These are the first two of the series I hadn't read originally. They're quite interesting for a day, though. After this they get quite horribly expensive, for books.

Lois McMaster Bujold - Mirror Dance
I was slightly intimidated by this being 600 pages and having lots of Mark in. It seemed to go by quickly, though because I really liked this one. There were some horrifying things that Mark did, and had done to him, that were...horrible. I was really interested to see Mark discover who he is. And it had Cordelia in it, yay! And I loved Miles thinking, near the end, that although he doesn't pick up nearly as many women as Ivan, he can't seem to put them down.

I was expecting last night's Doctor Who to change my opinions of their cliffhangers. But then it was resolved in 2 seconds and took me 2 minutes to work out what was going on (I spent most of that 2 minutes being annoyed it had been resolved so quickly). But I liked the episode, though. It was only when watching it with the commentary that I noticed the Doctor was still wearing his trainers with his DJ! Yay, for the Doctor has made it cool to wear trainers with trousers.

I was supposed to go on the Winchester slouch yesterday but there was engineering works that meant it would have taken three times as long to get there as it should, and I needed the sleep so didn't set my alarm. And consequently woke up too late to get there. So I finished my spring cleaning instead. My haul in the end was:

4 black bin bags of rubbish

4 carrier bags of charity

2 carrier bags of stuff to take home

1 dead moth and 1 live spider (it didn't live for long) and 1 wasp that briefly came in and was persuaded to go back out the window

more space on my bookshelves than I actually know what to do with (it won't last)

So, today I decided to have a day of doing nothing. I ended up watching most of an episode of The New Avengers that was on the bonus disk due to having an Emma Peel cameo in it. Except that the cameo was completely pointless. And I couldn't quite see the point of much else of the episode either. It seemed a lot like they'd given Gambit Steed's character and Purdey Cathy/Emma/Tara's. Which made Steed a bit pointless. In all fairness it might not have been the most interesting episode for all I know, but it's certainly not made me want to watch any more.

I do love The Avengers. Even though BBC4 have got to the end of the Emma Peel era and seem to have stopped there, my DVDs arrived from amazon.com the other day, so now Thursday night is still The Avengers. For another 25 episodes anyway, which ought to keep me going for a while.

The interesting thing was the documentary about it on the bonus disk. I already knew what Honor Blackman looks like now because I remember her in a comedy series many years ago with Joe McGann. So I got to see what she looked like then (totally different!). Diana Rigg sounds different - which I knew because she was on Radio 2 recently - but doesn't look as if it's been 40 years at all.

I also re-watched Genesis of the Daleks. I saw this when they repeated a few stories when I was in the third year at uni (I don't like to think to much about what actual year that was because it's too depressing) but I didn't remember anything about it.

Some of the cliffhangers were a bit iffy, but then I think that's the problem with having to have a cliffhanger at the end of every episode, and this story had six episodes. Davros was, well, horrid. Not just in the sense of him not being a nice person, but generally. The daleks I just wanted to pat on the head, they were so sweet.

The commentary was interesting too. I found out that Ian Marter, who played Harry, died suddenly nearly 20 years ago, which I didn't know. And looking at the imdb, I keep finding that half the actors in Doctor Who have been in Blakes 7 as well. But then given that half the actors in Blakes 7 seem to be doing the Big Finish CDs, that seems fair.

Because I have 70-odd DVDs on my amazon rental list (I keep thinking of things I want to watch, it's terrible) I signed up to screenselect to use their free month (and I have a list of other places who do free months I can use). Only trouble now is I've had about enough of the Tom Baker era as I can take. So Drop the Dead Donkey is a nice contrast! The next Doctor Whos on my list are Jon Pertwees, which I'm looking forward to because I really like his Doctor.

Through the magic of free months at different DVD rental sites, I currently have all three Sarah Jane Smith Doctor Whos here. I started with the Pyramids of Mars. It had its moments but they were a bit few and far between. It didn't help that I was confused about who was who as well. The short extra on how the location has changed between now and then was interesting. I've made it halfway through the commentary but I think I might just send it back now, because I can't quite be arsed with the rest.

Trillian is really annoying me. I set a global away message the other week. Ever since it seems to think I'm away - but only to me. Tech support suggested reinstalling it over itself. Since then, Jabber has refused to log in to Google Talk - although it likes to think it has occasionally. So now I'm going to have to uninstall and reinstall it to fix both problems. And make sure I save the skin and the sounds I'm using. (which come from a different skin).

Also according to Tech Support, it won't let you share files with ZoneAlarm. Except that it worked quite happily before I upgraded Trillian...

Very sad that tonight was the last episode of The Avengers BBC4 are apparently going to show. Also the last Emma Peel one. It was, quite rightly, full of innuendo, as usual. I want to say it was sad when Steed and Peel parted but it kind of wasn't. Anyway, when amazon.com send me my DVDs I still have all the black & white Peel episodes to go and a couple of colour ones I missed.

I can't work out whether my room is hot or I am or both. I've worked out that I've got the sore throat bug, though. I've actually had a sore throat since Friday, it just took me a while to work it out. My brain's not quite working at the moment, unsurprisingly.

I'm all excited cos the Remix archive is up! I wasn't expecting it to be until after I went to bed. So far I've only checked that my story is there (it looks quite weird that thin!) and to see which of my stories has been remixed. It's slightly sad that I had to check back to my story to find out what the original was (see above re brain) but I'm really excited about what the remixer has done with it. I will give them more coherent feedback once I can work somewhere above 'squee'.

I have an idea for a B2MEM related post, that I will try and get in before the end of the month. But I decided to talk about the TV I've watched recently - because there's actually been some on!

I got round to Poirot last night. Usually they just do one at a time, at New Year, but there's another one tonight, which surprised me. I did enjoy last weeks but I was completely confused by the end. I don't know whether that was me or the program, though.

I watched Comedy Connections about Drop the Dead Donkey. It's been so long since I've seen any of it that I had forgotten loads of it. Like Gus's management speak. It must have been the first time I'd heard any of it. It was really interesting to learn all sorts about it as well. I'm really disconcerted by the way Neil Pearson doesn't seem to have aged at all.

Then there was a one-off drama called Best Man. Technically it was in two parts, I watched it in one (much better). I was a bit skeptical at the beginning because it seemed quite strange. It was about these two men who had a bit of an odd relationship. You saw how they became friends in flashbacks and their relationship was always a bit odd. The whole thing was pretty much about who was the more strange of the two. It was really good, though. Plus it had Zoe from Spooks and Jeff from Coupling in it.

I'm really missing the 'Mrs Peel, we're needed' bits from the beginning of The Avengers. Although that was probably because this week's wasn't that good. I'm still entirely confused what relevance the dog had.

And there was new Taggart, yay! And on a Wednesday, the most boring day of the week when there's never anything worth watching. I entirely failed to work out whodunnit, as per usual, but I did manage to start it just right, that I finished just after the actual program did, thus gaining me back 15 minutes of my life.

Recently, Nilmandra had a post about characterisation, and in the comments I talked about liking characters I want to grow up to be, or at least some aspect of their personalities I'd like to have. I've also talked with Sel on various occasions about characters we want to grow up to be. So I thought I'd list some.

Ros Henderson (Bugs) - Quite aside from the fact that she was played by Jaye Griffiths, who I loved in The Bill (which was the whole reason I started watching Bugs in the first place). Ros is really intelligent - there's nothing she can't do with computers and gizmos. If there's something electronic you need doing, she's made a gizmo to do it. She also knows a lot of science, which isn't a surprise. She's also good as a spy-type, not easily scared, can think on her feet, and can fight if she needs to (even if she's not quite as good as the boys).

Ace (Doctor Who) - Ace was the person I wanted to grow up to be when I was little. I'm still not sure I don't. She had that whole cool-thing going on where she didn't like school and was a bit of a rebel. But she was good at chemistry (especially when it came to explosions). She was also a useful person - she made friends easily (it seems to be a bit of a pre-requisite in a companion, or perhaps it's just spending all that time with only The Doctor for company), she could go and investigate stuff on her own and she wasn't easily frightened.

I've just recently listened to Big Finish's Live 34, in which Ace seems to be about my age. It's interesting that they've had her growing up, so she's less of a rebel, more independent when it comes to being someone The Doctor can rely on to go off on her own and do something useful (even if she hasn't quite lost her taste for explosions). Even if I'm not quite sure I want to be the Ace from the TV series when I grow up, I definitely want to be the Big Finish's version.

CJ Cregg (The West Wing) - She's the character everyone loves and it's not hard to see why. I'm finding hard to say why, though. She's good in a crisis, always has a witty put-down, has a good relationship with the press and other important people, is really intelligent about lots of things, especially political stuff. She also really cares about people both her friends and people that are affected by decisions the president makes. But she's also human - I really like the old days when she was still Press Secretary and she and Carol used to discuss how good-looking any man that had a meeting with her was.

Beth March (Little Women) - I think it was on the BBC's Big Read that I heard it said that everyone's favourite character from Little Women was Jo. That would be everyone except for me. As much as I loved Jo and her tomboyish ways, I liked Beth more. Beth was almost too-good-to-be-true perfect - she always put others before herself. Not that the other girls didn't, but sometimes they needed to be prodded into it. Beth always did it off her own bat.

Emma Peel (The Avengers) - I saw a quote on a website somewhere saying that one of the reasons The Avengers was so successful was that all the blokes wanted Peel and wanted to be Steed, and all the women wanted Steed and wanted to be Peel. Emma Peel kicks arse. She can hold her own in a fight and when it comes to brains she's really clever. She's always ready with a witty comeback and she's seriously not easily scared.

There are probably others that I've forgotten. But who do you want to be when you grow up*?

I feel like I've done nothing this week and still not had any time left. And since I haven't written much in here this week, I thought I'd talk about what I've been up to this week.

Tuesday we had a film night, which I must write up for the Wallingford Rotaract blog. One of our members has a widescreen TV with surround sound, and as they got me 2001 on DVD at the end of my year as president, it seemed like a good place to watch it. The problem is convincing the rest of the members that! In the end we watched Galaxy Quest. Of the five of us there, one hadn't seen it, the rest of us had but were happy to watch it again. It just never gets less funny, and every time I watch it I spot more things that are based off other sci-fi and other things I've missed. It's such a good film.

I also wrote 25 drabbles in four days, which is a hard way to write 2500 words. Although it helped that work wasn't that busy at the start of this week. I also wrote 25 different characters, which wasn't how I planned it to start with, but I quite enjoyed writing characters I'd never written before. I also really enjoyed writing LOTR again. I'd forgotten how much canon I'd forgotten as well. I've actually been catching up on my LOTR reading now, and reading the Atlantis in between for a break. A lot of the stuff I've been catching up on is quite intense, so a bit of crack!fic is always good for a change. I'd also forgotten how much I liked writing drabbles, so I will have to make more of an effort to write some more - I have some ideas on that front.

I've been trying to get through my Bugs DVDs too. The one I watched last night was the first to feature a future The Bill regular as a guest star, in this case Terry, although he only had two lines.

On a similar note, this weeks The Avengers had Peter Cushing in it. Despite some really ridiculous plot holes it was still an enjoyable episode. The one thing that got me was Emma Peel referring to her bag as her purse. I know, from surfing round, that the only reason these got made was because they were able to sell them to America in advance. I still don't think that excuses the Americanisms though, especially when they go to so much trouble to make it very British.

I've been listening to the podcasts Wil Wheaton's been doing this week. They've been surprisingly listenable. I say surprisingly because often I can only take so much of constant American accents, depending on the accent. The ten minute ones I've barely noticed, but today's (technically yesterday's) was 73 minutes. I did have to stop near the end to watch My Family (just started watching it after only previously seeing bits - it's very funny) but I think it only got grating after that, and I had reminded myself what no accent at all sounds like (relatively speaking, of course.

At some point, when I get round to it, I want to write up the character-related post that's been going round my head. I also need to talk about LOTR for b2mem. But World Rotaract Week starts on Sunday, so I'll be blogging about what we're going to be up to, and talking lots about Rotaract. Really, you'll be sick of it. Unless you're 18-30, in which case you should be joining it. If I get to it between breakfasts on Sunday I'll tell you why, otherwise it'll probably be Monday.

I have finally finished my website. As well as an update I've been re-organising it and changing the look slightly. Needless to say, it's still red. Mostly I've just CSS'ed it, added some more colours and made it so updating it doesn't take so long.

I've had a bitch of a week. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I worked really hard (and late, although not by loads), so that wore me out. It calmed down Thursday in time for me to have a migraine instead. I took lots of drugs early on, so it wasn't too bad, but I'm still tired from all that, which is really annoying. Plus I keep on making typos by exchanging one word for another and confusing everyone completely.

I really enjoyed this weeks episode of The Avengers. They did a body swap episode, so a pair of bad guys (who were lovers) swapped bodies with Steed and Peel. The guests acted Steed & Peel really well, so you were never in doubt who was who. He gets swapped first, so the bad guy tricks Peel into getting swapped (since it requires a big machine). But you'd think she'd have been more suspicious when he refused a drink (although mainly because she said 'you know where it is' and he didn't), called her Emma and walked into the place before her.

The funniest part was the announcer when we came from the adverts, who tried to explain who was who but was a bit confused!

As much as I like Steed & Peel's constant innuendo, seeing them kissing was a bit wrong (although technically it was just their bodies with someone else's pschye in them). At the end, she has to convince him she's herself and whispers something in her ear, which immediately does the trick - I'd love to know what it was!

Last week's episode was also really good. The plot had some bad guy after Steed, and particularly Peel. He takes Steed out fairly early on, then spend the episode slowly winding Peel up so she's not quite sure what's going on. Once he reveals his plot, then she's really scared, although she's pretty much fine right up until the end when she's fighting with the bad guy and losing (having already taken out the bad girl).

When Steed saves her at the end, it's quite sweet that she just smiles at him and he takes her hand to lead it out - nicely subtly done.

I've been surfing round The Avengers Forever website which has all sorts of useful information on it.

I now have a working right shift key, with thanks to my friend and some superglue. And then I used it to bring my Jack/Liz fic up to version 3. I seem to get to v5 pre-beta these days, so one of the things on my big list of things to do this weekend is to print it out and get it to v4 at least. I got overexcited and started my remix fic as well. Although by started I mean wrote four paragraphs and got stuck.

I squeed at The Avengers last night. It was all set on trains and in stations, and at the start we saw a man running between a whole load of stationary trains. There was a lovely long shot from above and they all looked like the type of trains we had in our electric train set. Which was very exciting. At the time they seemed more like real trains should be than real trains. It's almost disappointing now that you can get ones that look like Virgin trains - why would you want to?

If I hadn't left work late I was intending to watch Quantum Leap, which I had just discovered was on ITV3 at 6pm. It was only after I realised I wasn't going to make it on time that I realised this meant it would have adverts in and I just can't cope with that. It was only later that, given I'd have to pause it anyway to deal with dinner that I realised it doesn't matter cos I'd fast forward through them. It's a bit academic anyway cos I have them all on CD but there's just something different about watching them on real TV.